Insider Info #6 - Things you may never have thought of

Now, as most of the first world population is on Facebook - and other social media sites - this problem may not come up. But it is something important you need to know.

As an author you want to have a fan page for, well, your fans. This will be a place for them to gather and rave about your greatness and... Okay, so that may be pushing the envelope a little, but we can all hope right?

Something you may not know though is that unless you create a page for your author persona and then a fan page, you could run into difficulties. Where? you ask. Glad you did. Advertising on Facebook. If you ONLY have a fan page - in other words you have your own personal page and you "Create a Page" - you can NOT advertise as your author persona, only as your real life self. At all. Ever. You need to actually make a Facebook account for your author persona and then create a page for your fans from that persona. This of course doesn't matter if you are using your real name but if you are writing under a pen name, be forewarned. Yeah, screwy huh?

We think so too but with the way things are always changing and moving on Facebook we're never sure what the hell is going on anyway. Which brings us to another tip we want to warn you about on Facebook. Check your "Active Sessions" on a regular basis. Wait! Before you freak, we have directions.

Go to the little "cog" in the blue bar at the top of your screen. It's the little round bumpy looking wheel to the right of your name and the little lock that looks like it's going really fast. Click on it and scroll down to "Account Settings" - click on it. Once you are in there you want to look to the left hand bar where a number of things are listed. It reads, in descending order:  General, Security, Privacy, Timeline and Tagging, etc, etc.

You will want to click on "Security". At the bottom of these bolded headings of the page that just appeared reads "Active Sessions". Click on "Edit" to the right of it (little blue link) and a drop down like screen will appear. You need to know where you are signed in from at all times so you know if someone is hacking your account. Try and remember if you check your Facebook from work, your phone, a tablet or iPad, etc. But these should (in theory - unless you are on a trip) be all in the same city. If there are ANY not in your current location - click the little link to the right that says "End Activity". Do this with every session NOT your own. Then, immediately, change your password and check again. Hackers are evil little shits and they love to do stuff to fuck you around.

Once you have done a second round of checks. Change your password one more time. This may seem redundant, you just did it. But that old saying, better safe than sorry, applies here. So do it! Once you have done that - warn your fans. Post up a message letting them know that you were potentially hacked -if you can, give a rough time line as well- and let them know that anything before your current message should be ignored as potentially dangerous spam especially anything with a link in it.

There you have it, our helpful tips to ensuring the safety of your online life. We will have more to come.

The Moderator